MXR
Clone Looper
With a two-button system for recording and playback, the Clone Looper simplifies many looping maneuvers by eliminating some double-click and hold sequences. But with awesome and trippy features like adjustable playback speed and reverse playback, you can easily take the Clone Looper's simpler looping processes to particularly psychedelic ends.
$149 street
Silktone
Silktone Amp
This handwired 1x12 combo employs a KT66 power tube for its class-A circuitry, resulting in glassy cleans reminiscent of a tweed Champ, and fat and pleasantly compressed high-gain tones without sacrificing shine. Joe Gore was also impressed with its aesthetic and workmanship, as well as Silktone's spring reverb. “It's got the feel of a vintage Fender tank, but with uncommon wetness and depth."
$2,199 street, as reviewed with ceramic speaker (alnico speaker $200 extra)
Fender
Vintera Telecaster '50s
Just about any Telecaster flirts with perfection in form. But Fender did not rest on their laurels in re-interpreting the '50s-styled variation in the new, affordable Vintera series. The neck is lovely, with a hefty deep-U shape, and the alnico 2 bridge pickup delivers the essence of bright, spanky, and rowdy Tele-ness, while maintaining a warm glow around the edges that is a beautiful match for a touch of vintage-style reverb.
$899 street
Fender
Vintera Telecaster '70s
Keith Richards, who could have any freaking Telecaster in the world if he wanted it, has used the Telecaster Custom he bought new in 1975 regularly ever since. When you play the Vintera version, it's easy to understand why. Fender's Tim Shaw worked hard to build a more authentic WideRange humbucker for this instrument, and the work paid off—creating an expansive palette of spanky-to-smoky tones when paired with the alnico 5 bridge single-coil.
$899 street
Yamaha
Red Label FSX3
Adam Perlmutter found that the OM-sized FSX3, which honors Yamaha's much-loved red-label guitars of the '70s, feels better-built than the company's original FG guitars, which is no small compliment. Perlmutter shared that the FSX3, boasting all-solid-wood construction, “feels great, exhibits real versatility, and is free of the old-guitar baggage that comes with vintage examples."
$999 street
TC Electronic
Hall of Fame 2x4
A maximalist expansion of TC's popular Hall of Fame 2 pedal, this reverb machine boasts 10 factory settings, six user memory slots, and eight stored patches, accessible via its four hefty footswitches. “Everything about the Hall of Fame 2 x4 Reverb is exceptional," is the word from reviewer Joe Gore, who welcomed its rich and varied reverbs, as well as the pedal's delightfully simple interface.
$299 street
Origin Effects
RevivalDRIVE
Origin's luxurious stomps feel like outboard studio gear from analog audio's golden age. The RevivalDRIVE, however, has so much tone-sculpting power that it actually tends to function and sound like an old recording console module, too. The EQ is powerful, sensitive, and responsive, and the low-end tones are especially delectable. If you need an overdrive that can fill a very specific mix niche, this tool is worth every penny.
$385 street
Jackson Audio
Bloom
This ultra-versatile multi-effects pedal captivated PG with its ability to control, shape, and expand natural playing dynamics through its five different types of compression, a 3-band Baxandall-inspired EQ, and a 20 dB clean boost. Boasting super-sensitive knobs with finely tailored sweeps, the folks at Jackson Audio topped off the Bloom with MIDI control over all parameters via its TRS input.
$329 street
Electro-Harmonix
Ram's Head Big Muff
Given what a vintage Ram's Head Big Muff costs these days, this new version's $99 price tag alone is cause for celebration. But the tab is extra-impressive when you hear how well EHX nailed a vintage Ram's Head's legendary essence. It's growling, bold in the midrange, and stings like a wasp when you run the gain and tone wide open. If you don't have the bucks for a vintage pedal or a high-end Ram's Head clone, this remarkably economical iteration is a must for rounding out your Big Muff collection.
$99 street
Blackstar
Silverline Standard
This 20-watt, 1x10 combo from the folks at Blackstar got high marks for its retro style, user-friendly, ergonomic control panel, and all points in between. Joe Gore was wowed by the Standard's attractive amp and effects emulations—especially given its modest price tag—and shared that Blackstar's compact 30-pound combo would make for a convenient gig companion or great living room amp.
$429 street
Source Audio
Collider
The Collider, which combines some functionality from the already expansive Ventris reverb and Nemesis delay, seems like it might be a handful to manage. In fact, the Collider's clever integration of its parent effects makes exploring the wide-ranging feature set—which includes new emulations like an excellent Tel-Ray-style oil can delay—an intuitive and fun portal to thousands of huge and rich time-manipulation textures.
$349 street
PRS
SE Hollowbody Standard
The Paul Reed Smith Hollowbody model has become a modern classic since its design was first introduced in 1998. And it's now available (and made much more affordable) as part of the company's made-in-China SE range. But don't let the down-market pricing fool you: Its elegant design, PRS-created hardware and electronics, and excellent playability easily earned the SE Hollowbody Standard a Premier Gear Award.
$999 street
Fender
American Ultra Jazz
As daunting as it is to alter a classic, revered instrument like the J, Fender hit it out of the park with subtle yet significant updates to its look and design. And with passive and active tones at the ready, Victor Brodén lauded the versatility of the Ultra Jazz, which allowed him to effortlessly conjure Marcus Miller-to-Jaco-esque tones.
$1,999 street
RatingsPros:Delicious Vox-to-Fender range of tones. Expansive tone controls. Dynamic, lively, and responsive. Huge range in tremolo and reverb textures. Quality construction. Cons: Loud enough to leave you wanting an attenuator, at times. Street: $1,999 Balthazar Cabaret 13 balthazaramps.com
| Tones:  Ease of Use:  Build/Design: Value:  |
Guitarists can be a stubborn lot when it comes to amplifiers. Switching a new pedal or guitar into a rig? That's no kookier than ordering Szechuan on pizza night. But switch an amplifier and you can profoundly screw with the sound and feel of everything in a signal chain. Not surprisingly, a lot of players pick something familiar and stick with it. And when you consider that collective experimental reticence, and the ample R&D required to develop a truly unique new amp, it's little wonder the amplifier gene pool sometimes feels small.
The fundamentally appealing essence of the Balthazar Cabaret 13 is the way it sounds new, fresh, and unusual while feeling like something you've known before. It's alive, immediate, sparkling, and responsive—a main line to your fingers and guitar. And while it's built around many Vox-y components like EL84 power tubes and a Celestion Gold speaker, it will feel like an old friend to anyone who has hung a Princeton or Deluxe out on its bleeding edge, or dove deep with a black-panel Fender combo in seas of reverb and tremolo. It also might be the loudest 13-watt combo you'll play in this lifetime.
Carving the Cornwall Pipeline
The Cabaret began as Balthazar de Ley's attempt to build a better Vox Cambridge—a sleeper 17-watt Thomas Organ-era Vox combo designed to go mano a mano with the Fender Princeton (if the borrowed collegiate naming scheme hadn't already tipped you off).
The Cambridge met a lot of de Ley's conceptual design objectives: Princeton dimensions and power, an EL84 power section to add a Vox-y edge to the voice, and reverb and tremolo that would make the Cabaret the perfect “small-stage British surf amp," in de Ley's words. But as he dissected the Cambridge, de Ley found much of the magic came from an unusual Rola alnico speaker and transformers with few modern equivalents.
So de Ley started from scratch, with the Cambridge as an ideal rather than a template, and insisting only on retaining its bias tremolo. Capturing the intangibles of the Cambridge tremolo wasn't easy. De Ley ran into ticking sounds, hum, and unpredictable interactions with the rest of the circuit that made development a protracted affair. To make a long story short, de Ley determined that reproducing the capacitance of the Cambridge tremolo's footswitch within the Cabaret circuit itself was the bizarre fix that made it all work. But de Ley's exhaustive efforts to reduce noise elsewhere in the circuit resulted in two big, additional dividends: the Cabaret was now super-efficient and lively, and the tremolo circuit could be made even more intense and rangy.
By the way, lest any of you are inclined to dismiss the Cabaret's snakeskin-pattern vinyl and gold details as flashy, keep in mind that the amp (like its cousin, the Film Noir 50) honors the livery of mid-'60s Selmers—contenders for the baddest-looking amps of the time. De Ley nods to another great British amp builder with the Hiwatt-style nameplate. But I can't help but think the name “Balthazar" in gold, Selmer-style, Old-English letters would look positively spectacular.
Your Round-Trip Ticket to Waikiki, 007
When Balthazar de Ley talks about a “small-stage British surf amp" as a design ideal, I know exactly what he means. Conceptually speaking, the combination of a Fender combo's animation and air combined with a Vox's toppy bite is enough to get me twitchy. But the Cabaret is more than an AC15 with extra-potent reverb and tremolo. And the ease with which it blurs the lines between the Fender and Vox divide are a testament to the complexity and sophistication of its many voices.
I don't have a Princeton, AC15 or Cambridge to compare to the Cabaret. But I do have a black-panel Vibrolux with particularly strong tremolo and reverb, and the 13-watt Cabaret's ability to sound every bit as rich and loud as the bigger, 35-watt Vibrolux is impressive. It's surprisingly easy to dial in near-approximate and very rich Vibrolux tones. Doubly impressive, given that I started with the Cabaret in a very biting, Vox-like setting. How do the surfy sounds of the Cabaret 13 compare to a vintage Fender combo? Interestingly, the Cabaret's top-end has a little more weight and darkness around the edges than the sparkly Fender in these clean-ish settings. There's a bit more ballast on the bottom end. The Cabaret was also noticeably louder at equivalent volumes and less compressed as saturation sets in.
Some of these attributes are no doubt down to the beautiful alnico Celestion Gold 10" speaker. Compared to the well-worn original Oxfords in the Vibrolux, the Celestion Gold has more of the bass response and mass you would hear from a 12". But I'd bet that even a lot of dyed-in-the-wool Fenderphiles would dig—and even prefer—the extra bottom end and the softness in the treble tones.
The Cabaret's intrinsic Voxiness becomes more apparent at higher volumes. Natural overdrive tones are complex and growling sounds that turn feral and AC30-explosive as you add treble from the extra-rangy tone controls.
And about that tremolo: To say it's a feature attraction would be an understatement. At its maximum settings, which are more potent than any amp tremolo I can recall, it flirts with Vox Repeat Percussion levels of intensity and flutter. But its bias design also means that more sedate settings produce incredibly lush, smooth, and contoured throbs that you can live in for hours on end—especially when you add in reverb from the powerful, 12AT7-driven Accutronics reverb tank.
The Verdict
The Cabaret 13's capacity to walk the line between vintage Vox and Fender tones—and cross over with ease—is enough to merit investigation of this very interesting, original circuit. But with its surprisingly high headroom and volume, rangy and effective tone controls, and bias tremolo and spring reverb effects that move from subtle-to-surreal, this super-dynamic, high-quality, 13-watt amp is positively addictive—and the kind of amp that might find you keeping your pedalboard under wraps for a good long while.
Watch John Bohlinger test out the Balthazar Cabaret 13: